'Old hippie' seeks Guinness record

Green and spartan

Captain Jim Greer and crewmembers Danny Johnson and Jessica Bateman are shown on Greer’s homemade vessel, Ra, in St. Augustine on Thursday. The crew is attempting to set a record for the longest distance traveled in a completely solar-powered boat for the ‘Guinness World Records.’ They stopped in St. Augustine this week as part of their 6,600-mile voyage.

You won’t find any gasoline aboard this boat. No diesel, either. In fact, there isn’t even a sail on board. This vessel runs on the sun.

The boat is Ra, a 48-foot center hull trimaran designed and built by Jim Greer, a self-described “modern-day Huck Finn” whose dream has always been to “see America from the water.” And along the way, he’s hoping to get his name into the record books for making the longest voyage on a boat solely powered by electric engines, charged only by solar panels.

Greer and his crew, Danny Johnson and Jessica Bateman, are shooting for a place in the book, “Guinness World Records,” and stopped in St. Augustine this week as part of their 6,600-mile voyage.

They’re doing what is referred to as the “Great Loop,” which is the circumnavigation of Eastern North America by water. The Great Loop runs up the U.S. East Coast, using the Intracoastal Waterway, then uses rivers to get to the Great Lakes, over to the Mississippi, then south to the Gulf of Mexico.

Greer, 72, is a big man, with a bushy, salt and pepper beard. The Louisiana native, who has worked as a commercial fisherman, wildlife filmmaker and boat builder, said he believes in living life his own way.

“I’m one of the original old hippies,” Greer said Thursday, sitting at the helm of his little ship, moored south of the Bridge of Lions. “Back in the 1960s, I traveled around on Ken Kesey’s bus ‘Further’ for a little while. My name on the bus was ‘Fishmonger.’ It was one of the greatest experiences I’ve ever had.”

He said he’s hoping to top that with this voyage. And he’s documenting much of it with videos and photos, which crew member Danny Johnson posts on their Facebook page, as well as their website, Solar Boat Chronicles, at www.solarboatchronicles.com.

“We’re having a heck of an adventure so far,” Greer said. “Every town we stop in, and all along the waterway, we meet great, interesting people. People always ask what the boat is all about, and when we tell them, they’re very receptive. Your city is wonderful, and we’ve had a very good time in St. Augustine.”

Greer began his boating life at the age of 12 when — inspired by “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” by Mark Twain — he built a wooden boat and drifted down the Arkansas River.

“I built an eight-foot long boat with a box cabin,” he said. “I drifted down the river, then got caught in Arkansas down at the Mississippi by a sheriff who called me a runaway. He put me in his car and drove me back to my home in Wichita, Kan.”

As an adult, he piloted boats in Africa and Southeast Asia before spending eight years designing and building specialty boats for the oil industry, he said.

He also took jobs filming oil company facilities in various countries, later discovering a love of filming wildlife.

“But I always wanted to get back to boats,” he said. “About a year ago, the idea hit me to see America in a solar-powered boat, and I decided a good way to do that would be to do the Great Loop.”

Green and spartan

He said he designed the boat by “drawing it in the sand with a stick,” and spent three months putting it together from marine plywood, fiberglass and “lots of blood, sweat and tears.”

He built it mostly himself, though he had help here and there from friends, he said. He estimates that it cost him about $40,000 to complete the project.

The accommodations are spartan. There is no refrigeration, air conditioning or any of the comforts of home. The galley consists of a two-burner camping stove. For bathroom duties, there’s a composting toilet down below.

“This boat is essentially a camper that floats,” said Johnson, who’s from Merritt Island and has been on board about a week. “I knew what I was getting into when I came aboard, and I’ve got a very supportive family. It’s great, but it still takes some getting used to.”

There are berths for up to six people in the forward section of the boat, in a long shotgun arrangement. Standing up is not an option.

“We play a game with each other to see who hits their head the least,” said Jessica Bateman, who has been on board for about two weeks and intends to stick it out for the duration. “Not everybody can do this. But I’m having a lot of fun.”

Greer said a lot of people think they can hack it, but then find some reason to leave after they realize there are no luxury accommodations involved. He said he tries to screen them first, but “people often bite off more than they can chew.”

“We’ve been through several crew people,” Greer said, laughing. “The first thing we ask them is if they have any attachments. And right away, I tell everybody it’s not a yacht, that you’d better know how to camp. Then when they get on the boat, it’s cramped and crowded and we bump into each other, and they find some reason or another why they have to get off at the next port of call.”

8 hours on a sunny day

Propulsion is provided by two 48-volt Torqeedo electric outboard motors, which are linked in tandem. The energy for the motors is captured by 14 large solar panels that are 450 watts each, linked in pairs. The solar panels send the sun’s energy to a large battery bank, which supplies the motors.

Greer said the engines give up to eight hours use when the sun is shining. The batteries provide about three and a half hours use on a full charge, he said.

Twenty miles per day is about all they shoot for.

“When things are going well, and we’re traveling with the current, we can do about 7 or 8 miles per hour,” Greer said. “But on a cloudy day, we can still power along, at a much slower speed, more like 2 1/2 miles per hour.”

Greer said the Guinness World Records folks are very strict about what can be used on the boat.

“We can’t have any generators, gas, diesel or even wind on board,” he said. “They only want it through the panels.”

Around 10:30 Thursday morning, Greer fired up the motors, which are silent, while Johnson untied the bow from the City of St. Augustine mooring ball.

Next stop: Jacksonville.

“Danny’s wanting us to be in Jacksonville for Earth Day, which is Saturday,” Greer said. “They’ve got a whole big thing going on there. I suppose it’s fitting, because this is a very green boat, with almost no carbon footprint.”

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This has got to be the feel-good story of the year. Ironic that Capt. Jim has worked for the Petroleum industry and is doing this with no fossil fuel propulsion whatsoever. "Roughing it" is an American tradition lost to posterity... until now. Bravo!